Italian singer-songwriter Luigi Tenco's dark, brooding eyes and matinee idol looks masked a tortured soul. His untimely death in 1967, at age 29, spawned a cult around his intense and intimately-personal songs that survives to this day.

Luigi Tenco was found dead in his room at the Hotel Savoy in the early hours of 27 January. His life ended with a single gunshot to the head - just hours after his song 'Ciao, Amore Ciao' had been voted out of the Festival di Sanremo, the most prestigious music event in Italy and a precursor to the Eurovision Song Contest.

His body was discovered by his singing partner in the competition, the Egyptian-Italian diva Dalida. A brief, scribbled note found in the room announced: 'I do this not because I am tired of life (on the contrary) but as a protest against a public that sends roses to the final and a jury that selects 'La Rivoluzione' [another song in the competition].'

Authorities ruled it a simple case of suicide: sour grapes at having his work deselected. But Luigi Tenco was not the kind of person who went in for simple gestures. A complex man, introverted and shy, who (friends said) was in eternal conflict with himself and never satisfied with his work, Tenco made it his mission to popularise a new style of populist Italian folk song.

Sanremo was a means to expose his songs to a mass audience. And 'Ciao, Amore Ciao' was itself a thinly-veiled protest against the banal pop exemplified by the festival. It's rousing orchestral pop production backed a lyric that was simultaneously an impassioned cry against the soulless façade of the modern world and a love song to the land and the common man.

Plagued by crippling stage fright, Tenco downed a bottle of peach brandy and some tranquilisers to calm his nerves prior to his performance, but still had to pushed on stage by the show's host, Mike Bongiorno (Italy's answer to David Frost). Witnesses described him as glassy-eyed and distant. (All footage of his performance has mysteriously disappeared from the archives of state broadcaster Rai.) The song scored just 38 votes out of 900; a crushing disappointment that left Tenco inconsolable. He returned to his hotel room alone.

Numerous inconsistencies in the manner in which his body was found - slumped on the floor with the lower legs wedged underneath a dresser - and contradictory accounts of his final days created lingering doubts that Tenco's end could be explained away so easily. His body was even exhumed in 2003 to undergo further investigation.

But anyone looking for evidence of suicidal intent didn't have to look far. Tenco's songs bore titles like 'Una Vita Inutile' (A Worthless Life), 'Un Giorno Dopo L'altro' (One Day After Another). Even the lyrics to 'Ciao, Amore Ciao' could be read as a suicide note.

Tenco was not so much a bitter romantic as a fateful one, frustrated by hope and longing and riven by existential loss. He was not interested in the fantasy of romance peddled by the pop industry but the stark reality. His lyrics read like minimalist poetry; almost entirely shorn of ornamentation, they sometimes seemed curt to the point of being surly, but were emotionally devastating. 'Un Giorno Dopo L'altro' begins with spare and forbidding guitar figure offset by Tenco's mournful vocal and a lyric that describes a landscape as desolate as his heart. One commentator described the touchstones of Tencos' oeuvre as 'existentialism, unease and the grief of living'.

Songs like these stood out like a sore thumb against the frivolous Sixties mood. Equally, Tenco's unwavering commitment to socialist politics marked him as a dangerous radical. He applied the same blunt approach to protest songs like 'Es Ce Si Diranno' (And If They Tell Us), a rout against war and fascist sentiment with a chorus that urges, 'No, no, no, no'.

Unlike other celebrated European singer-songwriters like Gainsbourg and Brel, Tenco has had virtually no exposure to an English-speaking audience. In 1962, Perry Como recorded an English Version of 'Un Giorno Dopo L'altro' (with lyrics by Earl Shuman). More recently, Steven Brown, co-founder of cult band Tuxedo Moon, released a rather earnest cover album called Brown Plays Tenco. But, thankfully, Tenco has evaded the plague of Anglo half-wits looking to shore up their hipster credentials by murdering someone else's canon.

Maybe one day Tenco will find a worthy English interpreter who can match the intensity of his own performances. Until then, his songs remain untouched, the moving testament of a life lived without compromise.